Native Author Condemns 1 Land Acknowledgment at Union Church as Reassurance Instead of Reckoning
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Jul 24
Native Author Condemns 1 Land Acknowledgment at Union Church as Reassurance Instead of Reckoning
1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Jul 24
Summary
Union Church of Pocantico Hills drew the author's anger after a guide said displaced Native people would be “pleased with what we have done with the land.”
The author says the remark exposed a broader flaw in land acknowledgments: rituals meant to name dispossession can instead soothe present-day audiences and absorb the history they invoke.
The guide cited the Munsee Lenape but omitted the Weckquaesgeek, the specific community tied to that ground on the Rockefeller estate in New York's Hudson Valley.
Land acknowledgments spread across U.S. and Canadian museums, universities and cultural institutions, but some are now retreating; Ohio State barred most of them last fall under an anti-DEI state law.